There is no admission that the background art disclosed in this section legally constitutes prior art.
There have been many different types and kinds of computer arrangements for managing and accessing stored information. For example, reference may be made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,829,006; 5,848,415; 6,016,497; 6,119,126; 6,223,227; 6,571,232; 6,898,609; 7,200,602; 7,509,280; 7,644,066; and 7,949,545; and U.S. patent application publications 2003/0105811; 2003/0208493; 2006/0173873; 2006/0036656; 2007/0271275; and 2009/0187344.
Computers have stored information for use in a variety of applications. For example, electronic databases have been known and used for many years. A given native database such as a given populated relational database may require modification, such as a change in the schema for the database. In so doing, it would be necessary to provide additional changes and modifications to the access method for the database to enable the same or similar reports or other outputs to be generated. The same would be true if the type of database structure were to be changed. In this regard, changes and modifications would also be required to maintain consistent reports and other output from the system.
It would be desirable to have a standardized database access arrangement, whereby standardized outputs, such as reports, can be generated by accessing distributed native databases even after the schema or the format of one or more of the databases may be modified or replaced.
One example of one type of electronic databases having different schema or requiring modifications in the existing schema, may be a healthcare management system for healthcare enterprises. Modernly, primary healthcare is often times provided by healthcare enterprises. A healthcare enterprise is a group of healthcare facilities including, for example, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and others. Healthcare enterprises can be expansive, encompassing hundreds of doctors and many geographically widely dispersed point of care facilities. Alternatively, they can be more modest in size having just a few facilities.
Further, each facility may have computer systems that operate differently and store information in diverse formats and schema. Thus, information from different facilities of the same enterprise or of a different enterprise, may not be readily usable by another facility within the same enterprise or enterprises. For example, if a patient has been seen at two or more different facilities of an enterprise or of different enterprises, the medical number assigned to the patient may be different for each facility or enterprise.
A healthcare enterprise having multiple facilities may encounter several problems when admitting a patient. For example, it would be helpful to know whether or not the patient to be admitted is a current patient or had been previously admitted at any of the facilities of the same or different enterprise. Since each of the facilities may be using record management features incompatible with the other facilities, there is no efficient manner to find if a patient had been previously admitted to the same enterprise or to a different enterprise.
Confidently identifying all of the distributed records for a given to-be-admitted patient can be a daunting task. However, it is critical that the patient be positively associated with their true and complete medical record, if available. Such an identification task is exacerbated if the patient is unconscious. The person admitting the patient oftentimes must rely solely on antidotal information to establish the identity of the patient. Thus, the actual identity of the patient may not be established, or an incorrect identity made. Either way, providing treatment for the patient is difficult and may even result in harmful delays in the treatment for the patient.
In providing healthcare to a patient, it is highly desirable that a complete medical history be available to healthcare practitioners. However, in the modem healthcare environment, patients routinely are transferred to different facilities of the same or different enterprise. Thus, over a period of years a patient's medical record may become fragmented and dispersed among the various facilities of an enterprise, or even different enterprises.
Therefore, in general, it would be highly desirable to have a new computer arrangement for more efficiently and effectively communicating information. When the stored information changes or grows over time, it can be a challenge to continuously adapt the computer arrangement to the ever changing environment. Only one example of which is a system of distributed patient databases. Such a computer arrangement is ever changing. As patient data increases among a group of distributed databases, such as the databases associated with various facilities of a healthcare enterprise, or among various different and even unrelated healthcare enterprises, the complexity of managing the growing stored information continues to be an ongoing problem requiring attention.
The new computer system further should be able to quickly and efficiently be installed without burdensome expense to the enterprise that uses the computer system. When the computer arrangement is part of a computer network, for example, a new computer system joining the network should be able to preserve prior information technology investments and maintain its stored information with little or no modifications required.
In the example of a computer network, it would be desirable to have such a new computer network and method which could resolve non-compatible data information between network member computers, so that desired requested information such as given desired data files or records could be uniquely and confidently identified across the entire network, so that the desired information could be readily accessed across the computer network. As an example, but not by way of limitation, a clinical information system may contain clinical data about a patient organized by patient identification fields. The fields may not be unique or compatible across distributed hospital systems in the same or different enterprises. Thus, it would be important to have a unique identifier for every patient across the entire network of hospital systems.
One conventional technique for providing a network of computer systems employing databases is the “shadow” database arrangement. A shadow database is a separate database which stores the data of all the networked databases. In this manner, each member computer system has access to the data of all the networked databases by accessing the shadow database. However, all the databases must be synchronized with the shadow database. When inconsistencies are detected, then a resolution must be made in each separate database and in the shadow database. Also, whenever a new database is added to the network, the shadow database must be reconstructed to add a copy of the new database data. Also, each one of the existing network member databases usually require reconstruction, because all of the network databases and the shadow database must be synchronized.
Such requirements for a shadow database arrangement are time consuming, awkward and expensive. Maintaining the synchronism among the network databases is a continuous process of reconstruction as more and more data is being stored across the network. Also, such a network arrangement is limited to the number of databases that may be added. Every time a new database is added to the network, the complexity of maintaining the arrangement is multiplied and the shadow database continues to grow in size. When a new database is added to the network, the new database must be reconstructed to be compatible with the schema of the other network databases and the shadow database, so that any member computer system can access network data by accessing the shadow database. Thus, any new database can not be quickly and efficiently added to the network as the entire network is impacted including the shadow database.
It would be highly desirable to be able to add new databases to an existing network of databases in a fast and efficient manner. Also, it would be enormously beneficial to be able to expand the size of the network of databases substantially without limits in a convenient and cost effective manner. By so doing, any computer system database may be added to an ever expanding number of networked databases so that information may be exchanged readily and conveniently across the network.
Thus, it would be highly desirable to be able to exchange data between network member computer systems in a standardized manner, even where at least some of the databases have different schema. It would be desirable to have the ability to interchange information across databases, and still be able to communicate in a standardized manner. Additionally, such a computer network should be scalable to be able to add conveniently new legacy databases of new computer systems, or of new facilities, even though the new databases have different schema and even though some of the existing databases may have their schema revised or changed periodically.
All of this should be accomplished by having each computer system of the network being a stand alone computer. In this regard, there would be no need for centralized indexes or other centralized control operations for the network. A new computer system should be able to be added to the network in a stand alone manner and function almost immediately on the network, without restructuring its database. Also, any inconsistencies in the information being interchanged should be self-correcting and dynamically adaptable.
Such a computer arrangement and method should also be able to be self-correcting dynamically should incompatible information be retrieved from the distributed databases. Furthermore, such a computer network and method should be able to add a new computer system to the existing network and begin to function with the other networked computer systems almost immediately without any revisions to its formats or schema and without any revisions to the other networked computer systems. Each networked computer system could function in a stand alone manner and yet be able to access all of the databases across the entire network, even though there may be differences in the formats and schema among the various databases.
As to the more general aspects of the invention, the present invention is not in any way limited to clinical information systems, or even to networked computers. The present invention may be employed on a single stand alone computer which may be used for a variety of different applications and uses. Such variety of different applications and uses may include, but is not in any way limited to, financial applications, office applications, video games, system controls and a whole host of many other applications and uses. The computer arrangement and method of the present invention relates in general to an efficient and effective technique for adapting dynamically over time to continuously changing stored information requirements. The technique enables dynamic self corrections on the fly to be made as information requirements change with time. Thus, the novel technique is scalable and self correcting automatically over time.